Def Leppard Working on ‘Awesome’ New Album

Def Leppard have begun writing and recording the follow-up to 2015’s self-titled album, guitarist Phil Collen has revealed. But there’s no word on when the British band’s 12th LP will arrive.

“We have three songs on the go,” Collen told Classic Rock Revisited in a new interview, predicting that an “awesome” work was underway. “Rick Savage has one, a verse that he sent me. I was messing around with some melodies for that too, and Joe [Elliott] has this amazing idea, and I have this one that’s kind of finished. I have melodies, a chorus and all the guitar parts. So we’ve started, officially, without even knowing it, the next Def Leppard album.”

He confirmed that some recording has also taken place, but noted the industry's drift away from how things were done in the past means they may take a different route toward release. “The great thing about music now is you can do it any time with your computer," Collen noted. “I don’t know when it’s going to come out. It’ll probably be a traditional album, but you never know. If someone says we need a new Def Leppard song, we’ll put it out. It’s great to have every option available.”

The band spent time this year marking the 30th anniversary of their landmark album Hysteria. “Listening to it now, it’s even better than I remembered,” the guitarist said. “When we were doing it, [someone] said, ‘Why are you spending so much time and putting so much money into it?’ He said, in 20 years time, would we be sitting here and talking about it? It’s 30 years now, so he was obviously bang-on about it. It was a really special time.”